How could Hollywood create a set as complex as that? (sarcasm)
No, I’m not saying the 1963 moon landing was a hoax, nor am I saying it wasn’t a hoax.
When I first learned that some people believe the moon landing was a hoax, I sided with those who thought the suggestion was a little out there. After all, the event was watched and scrutinized by millions of people around the world. There was no room for the tiniest conspiracy.
The observation that the American flag couldn’t fly on an orb with no atmosphere, therefore the event was staged, doesn’t hold water for obvious reasons. The astronauts simply propped up the flag, DUH.
Later, I was suckered by a similar but more complex argument: why are no stars visible in the sky?
I posted a question on an astronomy forum and received a logical answer. Since the moon has no atmosphere, the sky is always black, during the day. By day, the moon is bombarded by rays of light from the sun, which are reflected back into the atmosphere, washing out the distant stars. It’s similar to the effect city lights have on the night sky. Star-gazing sucks here in Gothic Seattle.
The moon landing was genuine, folks.
My faith took another mild hit when I realized that some of the arguments promoted by propagandists varied from lame to bizarre. There’s no better example than the claim that a conspiracy would have involved over 400,000 conspirators. That’s just one of several wacko claims made by a fucktard named David Grimes. (Grimes also claims it would have been almost exactly 3.68 years before one of those 400,000 conspirators had come forward and blown the whistle on the conspiracy.)
However, wacko arguments don’t really prove anything. They could just be the work of propagandists who never tire of fucking with people’s minds. They could make up nonsensical arguments supporting the existence of the sun.
One of the most solid pieces of evidence affirming the moon landing was the acquisition of an authentic moon rock found nowhere on Earth.
But wait a minute … it turns out that amalcolite (named in honor of the astronauts, Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins) has indeed been found on Earth. It has also been found in lunar meteorites. Therefore, it could have conceivably been discovered before NASA landed astronauts on the moon.
Another thing I couldn’t get out of my mind was the fact that it is apparently so damn hard to return to the moon, six decades after the original moon landing. Unmanned rockets launched by Israel and India crashed into the moon in 2019.
To me, the situation seems absolutely astonishing. Let me put it in perspective.
I bought my first computer in 1985, two decades after the first moon landing. That computer was primitive compared to the MacBook Pro I’m using to write this article.
Computers have accelerated the very rate of technological “progress.” In the military arena, research and development has focused largely on missiles since World War II.
Give all these technological advances, surely it must be possible to build a spacecraft that is stronger yet 5% lighter than the Apollo spacecraft that made history in 1963. I would also assume that great advances have been made in propulsion (i.e. rocket fuels). I would also speculate that a modern payload would be 5% lighter.
So put it all together. If you have a lighter spaceship with a lighter payload and an enhanced propulsion system, shouldn’t the astronauts be able to reach the moon a little quicker? Instead of four days, they might make the trip in three days. If they saved two days round trip, they would be able to jettison still more food and water, making their spaceship lighter still.
On top of everything else, we have made tremendous advances in navigation and communications.
I’m not saying we should go back to the moon. Frankly, I think there are far more important things to spend our tax dollars on.
But you know the U.S. government. Its priorities are ass backwards. Hell, they’re talking about colonizing Mars! So why have we not been back to the moon?
The plot thickened just days before I wrote this when yet another rocket crashed into the moon. The punch line: No one knows where it came from!
That would seem to make a mockery of the claim that the 1963 moon landing was closely monitored by governments around the world. How many governments actually had the ability to observe the Apollo spaceship and listen to communications between the astronauts and Earth?
But what about that legendary film of Neil Armstrong bravely walking on the moon that was scrutinized and analyzed by millions of people around the world?
What about it?
The film of the first moon walk was just that, a film. It wasn’t the real thing.
That leaves the door open for the possibility that the film could have been fabricated in Hollywood, not on the moon.
I got into an argument with a conspiracy theorist named Petra Liverani who insists that the film of the event was too complex to be faked. Seriously?
There are no plants, animals, or man-made items on the moon. There’s nothing in the lunar sky. How could it get any simpler?
Have you ever seen the classic science fiction movie Forbidden Planet? It was made in the 1950s, and it features sets that are more complex than the lunar landscape.
Liverani’s claim that Hollywood can’t simulate the effect of the sun’s rays being scattered by lunar irregularities is comical. Are there no similar landscapes in the arid Southwest? How hard would it be to construct a Hollywood set out of concrete, rocks and dust and suspend some bright lights above it?
I’m still not convinced that the moon landing was a hoax, but my suspicions continue to grow. Rather than ask if it was staged, we might ask a parallel question: would it be possible to stage such an event?
Liverani (who is apparently a fan of a propagandist’s prop called Occam’s razor) defiantly declares the superiority of evidence over logic. So let’s give his evidence a test drive …
Imagine you hear a knock on the door one day. You open the door, and a man greets you.
“Hi, I’m Neil Arsmtrong, and I want you to know that I really did walk on the moon. To prove it, I’m going to give you an authentic moon rock.”
Pretty impressive, huh?
Of course, the first problem is that you aren’t going to believe a word the man says. Why would Neil Armstrong single you out for a personal visit?
But suppose you had some way of knowing that it really was Neil Armstrong. That still wouldn’t prove he was telling the truth.
It’s hard to imagine more powerful evidence than an authentic moon rock. But how do you know that rock really came from the moon? How would you feel if you knew similar rocks occurred on Earth?
Suppose ten people knocked on your door one day. Each one claims to be Neil Armstrong as he hands you a moon rock.
That’s ten pieces of rock hard evidence. However, they can’t all be Neil Armstrong, and the rocks probably aren’t all moon rocks. It’s possible that none of them are.
This foray into conspiracy and psychology is a reminder that it’s possible to be right for the wrong reasons and wrong for the right reasons. Maybe the 1963 moon landing really happened, and lots of foolish people are just using some idiotic arguments to prove it.
Here’s where things get interesting. We can only assume that people will once again walk on the moon one day. Or not.
If no human walks on the moon by 2030, the doubters will be even more firmly convinced. If, on the other hand, a human does walk on the moon in the next few years … well, let’s just hope the astronaut’s experience isn’t radically different from the 1963 landing.
I’ll have more to say about the moon landing in my book Conspiracy Science.